Multiplayer games, to many, are the way of the future. As yet, massively multiplayer online games haven't quite broken into the consciousness of the everyday Joe. But perhaps it is just around the corner? The Escapist takes on massively multiplayer online games in this week's issue, "Raid!"

The first issue is price, with tech advancing and the ability to place ads in online games should switch to a free and premium setup allowing even more players to join and more profits to be had but when will this break, ad systems are still in their infancy so for the next few years nothing will change until a MMO hit comes into play and offer it.

Another thing is PC and its hardware, the games them selfs need to be made to run on as many PCs as possible and still look great for a meduim or higher rig.

Lastly Fun V grind if ad systems are in place to help stabilize monetary flow then prehaps devs can get away from bait and grind tactics and make games more people can enjoy.

Lastly with consoles being literary mini PCs there will be no gap between them and PCs unless the console maker stifles the market further with draconian premium services, I am not bashing Live as much as warning it of its place, 5+ years ago it was a god send now with vista gaming and live enable vista games live needs to find a better price, frankly all monthly fee setups need to find a better price, I want to be charged for what I use they have the ability to track it so do it and you might get my money, the best way to do it is bill by the month or year and round the time up as so 1 and half weeks of play time = half a month,70% or more of yearly usage = a year in service do soemthign for use middle of the road people and we might start spending money on you.

Dom, I'd say that we're right on the cusp of MMOGs being a part of the mainstream. World of Warcraft's debut in Southpark is the exception that proves the rule - they're not quite there yet (or else I doubt there'd be as much surprise when telling people about games people willingly, gladly even, pay $10-$15 per month to play) but the initial forays into mainstream culture are there.

Southpark is certainly more mainstream than your typical games mag or website, but for MMOGs to be very mainstream, I'd say it'd have to be something our parents read or watch with regularity. If it (and really others, too) rolls in on Oprah (and not in a "it killed my marriage" kind of way), then we're getting somewhere.

Zippy, I agree with you fully about system specs. Once more devs start developing for machines people have now, rather than what they'll have in 3 years or when they spend $600 to upgrade to play, I think we'll see more pick-up. It was one of Blizzards smartest moves with WoW.

I'd say WoW's popularity is pretty much equal to the mainstream popularity of multiplayer gaming as a whole (i.e. it controls the bar). Before that, it was probably Halo 1, Counter-strike or Everquest, and neither of those were even close to WoW's success (well - barring Starcraft, since that's kind of an anomaly). Even halo 3 is very far behind, and of course that's with MS throwing millions and millions of dollars into advertising.

More WoW in media. The thing that surprises me most is that it's such a strange game to be accepted whole-sale by the world at large, since widespread acceptance I'd think would obviously rely more on presentation/story/theme than gameplay. Obviously WoW's is good, but again, it's good to us fantasy nerds (hey, who knows, maybe the HP phenomena had something to do with it as well).

Yatzee was right, "grind right up the bum", every game does it and most people love it till it burns them. Personaly i played WOW for about two years, one of those on a 'private' server, the other on the blizzard servers, and my experience of the game at large was some how dissapointing after moving to the ligit world. Let me explain...

Sure in the 'private' server there where bugs, you would often wake up one morning with 24hr of game time ahead only to find the server down for an hour, followed by all accounts being fraged by some admin glich, then have to spend 23 hours re-meeting everyone you knew on the server.

BUT...

It was like a family. It was like a realy fantasy world. It was untamed, unexpected and unending. With less than 200 people usualy involving themselves with the server at any time you really knew people, the few guilds who existed MEANT somthing, they DID things. Not like "oh we went to X and killed Y", it was more like a REAL adventure.

This all aside, I did have a lot of my RL friends come to the real WOW servers with me, about 6 of us in all at some point or another in the year played togeather. This was nothing to the experience i had while playing on a semi-broken, v0.5 eqv server with pings exceedign 20000 ms (yes that 20 secs to the server.... and yes thats 40!!!! secs for some one else to see me jump when i pressed space!!!!) All the same it was the building of friendships, the way people had time for eachother, and the manner in which the universe while HUGE for the few people who played seemed almost correctly scalled...... AFTER ALL WHERE DO ALL THE PEOPLE IN THE REAL WOW-ZERSE SLEEP!!!!!! (Hell there aint enough farms on one server to sustain the population of any one race.... even undead.... and they dont eat........... do they????? :S

MrKeroChanlets say with WOW,MMOs have become a sub culture the main stream pokes fun at, thus him saying "Dom, I'd say that we're right on the cusp of MMOGs being a part of the mainstream." is correct, the more TV love/hates it the more TV adverts for it the more people talk about it the more mainstream it becomes but as it could be replaced by another sub culture to be made fun of.

AndrasteWOW runs relatively well on a 6600 or 6200 and looks nice on a better card, they really need to work on the lower specs first and then start turning on features for the med/higher range.

For me pricing is a major issue, why do I want to spend 10+ a month for grindy crud?Pricing schemes and range of PCs are the 2 top imporant things I can see, gamepaly improvements would be nice...but..I am a gameplay nazi and always see gamepaly issues, its ovibous MMOs are doing well but they need to changes alil more befor they can fully go mainstream.